It’s not often you see a newspaper apologise in a manner commensurate with how they ran the incorrect story in the first place. Kudos to Fairfax and the folks at The Age for their apology yesterday to the teenager they inaccurately identified. It would be good to see other Australian newspaper publishers follow this lead in the future.
The BriefMe app has been on Apple’s app store for two days and it’s popular. It provides the user with access to top trending stories across social media. While currently US focussed, I’m finding it useful for hearing about US stories not reported on here or as much through mainstream press. I trued BriefMe having read about it at TechCrunch.
What does this mean for newsagents: here is another app to disrupt how, when and where we can access news. It also disrupts the process of curating news. These are more than fads, they are trends that will not roll back.
I know some will say this is too much to consider to take in, that they are not that connected to care. Being aware does not need you to use these apps.
A newsagent at the counter you are like a human Brief Me when you talk about news stories which you and earlier customers have discussed.
Many retail businesses and retail brands are doing good through their product and shoppers are making decisions based on this socially responsible activity.
An early adopter was Hallmark through their support for the National Breast cancer Foundation. Internationally, The Body Shop set a high benchmark. Now, we have many retailers and suppliers doing good thanks to support from shoppers who want to do good.
I recently talked with the folks behind the Waka Waka solar powered torch. This brilliant product recharges using sunlight, making it ideal for all sorts of situations. When you purchase one, they give one away where it can do good. Take a look at this map and see where they are doing good with free torches.
It is products like the Waka Waka torch which we can source to do good through our businesses, to give our shoppers opportunities to do good on several fronts by shopping with us.
Click here to hear the terrific interview between 3AW’s Neil Mitchell and Australia Posts’s CEO Ahmed Fahour in which Fahour talks up sending Christmas cards and talks down sending Christmas greetings by email. He also notes that postage for Christmas cards is frozen at 65 cents.
Christmas cards are important to our channel. They generate traffic and drive deeper and more valuable baskets. We ought to thank those who talk up this segment of greeting cards and ourselves work hard to encourage people to send cards.
Check out the story published in The Standard about how a couple changed the newsagency into a gourmet food shop. This is one example of how to make your business in a small town relevant – by changing course and connecting with a regional USP.
I was pleased to see News Corp’s Courier Mail use their newspaper today and their social media platforms to make a plaintive call for the Indonesian Government to not kill the two Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
While I prefer to see newspapers focus on reporting news, in this instance the front page call is a reflection of widely held community sentiment in Australia. It humanises a newspaper which often negatively meddles in politics.
I was thrilled to hear and see optimism among newsagents at the newsXpress newsagency marketing group national conference in Melbourne Sunday afternoon through to last night. The up-beat mood was joyful to see and hear as was the talk about growth categories, business changes to chase and competition to tackle head-on.
There were 180 attendees at the conference, 125 newsagents – from large and small businesses located in the city, country and rural and trading in shopping centre and high street situations.
There was a trade show with plenty of non-traditional suppliers pitching products you can expect to make at least 50% GP and some offering as high as 70% on.
The conference sessions on Monday were about how we run our newsagency businesses and opportunities for new traffic and insights we can leverage for a brighter future. A couple of international speakers from one supplier shared insights that will benefit people for years.
The group visit to the Toy Fair yesterday was incredible in that it focused on growing even further into a category our channel owned decades ago and is a growth category as sales are wrested back from other retailers. Seeing 40 to 50 newsagents on a supplier stand for new product briefings and to purchase is a good sight.
I am a Director of newsXpress and was a speaker at the conference so I’d understand if you think this post is a commercial pitch. I have not written this to tell you to join newsXpress or to even promote the group.
The purpose of this post is to say that with the right people around you and the right supplier partners, optimism grows and optimism can help you see a path forward for your newsagency. You can find those right people and right suppliers in a number of places. It starts with you looking – and that’s what I urge newsagents to do. It does’t have to be a marketing group – but it should be more than you working alone.
These last few days have been a reminder of the value of friends working together and supporting each other on a shared goal.
Newsagents are starting to see product prices increase thanks to a sustained low Australian dollar. What some thought might be a short-term drop, the low dollar appears to be settled considerably lower than where it sat at August last year. The graph, from x-rates.com, tells the story. While many of our suppliers who source products from overseas would have hedged their exposure, that only lasts so long and this is probably why we are seeing price increases.
Newsagents who sell imported goods, and that is most of us, need to factor rising prices into our inventory replenishment plans. Sure we can sell items for more – timing is the issue here where some could be disadvantaged.
Partwork Precious Rocks, Gems & Minerals was reissued in the UK in January as In Publishing reported recently. With the last go round finishing quite recently I can understand Aussie newsagents are angry at reissue here so soon.
There are space issues with many additional demands on space already confronting newsagents and challenging our focus.
The other issue is returns. I’d urge newsagents who have received excessive stock to demand the publisher fund freighting returns. It’s not your problem.
We should have been given the opportunity to opt in on this.
If you are a Melbourne-based newsagent you should try and get to Toy Fair over the next four days. It’s an excellent event with many large and small toy suppliers attending.
We are on a mission to grow toy sales in my newsagency. In the first two months of this year toys accounted for 3.59% of revenue where as a year ago for the same period they accounted for 1.64% of revenue – this in a business with overall revenue growth of 17%.
Toys are playing a key role in our continued GP shift. This is one reason the Toy Fair is an excellent event.
Click on the image and read a Facebook Post from Occupy Sydney about newsagents and what is happening with lotteries. Their 3,322 Facebook friends received this post in their timeline while their 11,600 Twitter followers received a link to this in their timeline.
Besides the inaccuracy of what they have written, I do not want to be identified with a channel others say will disappear in one part of the channel has one or two new competitors. Such as view, as I have written many times here before is, in my opinion, inaccurate.
While I do not want to see Coles and Woolworths get stronger, I don’t think we benefit from this type of shrill argument. Further, if a newsagency is so weak that it would close if Coles or Woolworths nearby got lotteries then the business is already in serious life-threatening trouble.
My call to newsagents is to fix the business now rather than waiting to react to something which only may happen.
With participating magazine publishers and distributors getting closer to trialling their proposed code of conduct, I am publishing here today what I publisherd here in November last year as I think the code of conduct is unfair on newsagents. I’ve made it clear I do not want to be part of a trial under this code as it is far too one-sided, it does not address the core magazine supply issues newsagents face.
Magazine Publishers Australia and representatives of Pacific Magazines, Bauer Media, Network Services and Gordon an Gotch have been working on a possible code opt conduct for the supply of magazines to newsagents. This work was initiated by the publishers and has been in discussion for a year.
Any code is a complex process because it must have approval from the ACCC. Even the suppliers talking together requires ACCC approval.
As I have written here many times, a code is essential for the competitiveness of newsagents. Most recently, on August 30, I published my suggested magazine supply KPIs – these were first presented to publishers at a breakfast meeting in 2005.
Newsagents need to be part of the discussion of any possible code of conduct. Here is a draft of the MPA code of conduct. It may not be a current draft. I am not positing it here as a declaration of what will be put in place. No, I am publishing it here so newsagents can comment more generally on the topic of KPIs.
If you compare this code of conduct to my suggested magazine supply KPIs you will see the MPA draft is biased to serve the publisher whereas mine is biased to serve the newsagent. I think the MPA code needs some more work but it is a start. For example, the financial viability of a title in a newsagency has nothing to do with the size of the print run … the ideal sales efficiency has nothing to do with the size of a print run.
I’d also note: early returns are essential to cash-flow management in newsagencies. If Network and Gotch want to be paid they must allow early returns. If a title has not sold in two weeks it ought to be a reasonable candidate for early return.
Publishers and distributors need to understand that delayed billing is of little benefit to newsagents.
Since we carry the space, labour and financial obligation, we need a supply model that allows us to take on such obligations.
Here is a draft of what the MPA has been discussing:
1. Minimum Sales Efficiency
A Distributor will ensure that no Title has a Sales Efficiency of less than the minimum Sales Efficiency set out in the table below.
Distribution quantity per Issue Minimum Sales Efficiency
>..30,000 copies 55%
20,000 copies – 30,000 copies 50%
10,000 copies – 20,000 copies 45%
1,000 copies – 10,000 copies 35%
< 1,000 copies 25%
2. Consecutive Nil Sales
A Distributor will cease to distribute a Title to a Retailer for a minimum of 12 months if the Title has experienced consecutive nil sales at that Retailer for, in the case of:
a) a weekly Title, six consecutive Issues;
b) a fortnightly or monthly Title, four consecutive Issues; and
c) any other Titles, two consecutive Issues.
3. Returns
A Distributor will not require Retailers to provide Full Copy Returns, except in relation to Partworks.
A Distributor may require that Retailers provide, at the Retailers’ expense, Mastheads as evidence of unsold copies of an Issue and may require that Retailers:
a) package such Mastheads separately from any permitted Full Copy Returns; and
b) clearly mark packages containing Mastheads or Full Copy Returns as ‘Mastheads’ or ‘Full Copy Returns’, as applicable.
4. Early Returns
A Distributor will not be required to accept Early Returns from Retailers, except where such Early Return is made by a Retailer to correct an error in allocations quantity.
5. Redistributions – Packs & singles
A Distributor will not Redistribute an Issue on more than once occasion.
If a Distributor Redistributes an Issue, the Distributor will ensure that:
a) the prior distribution of the Issue has Closed;
b) at the date of the Redistribution, less than 12 months has elapsed since the Recall Date applicable to the first distribution of the Issue;
c) the number of copies of the Issue provided to a Retailer is less than the number of copies provided to that Retailer as part of the first distribution of the Issue (unless the first distribution of the Issue was a sell-out at that Retailer); and
d) the On-sale Period for the Redistributed copies of the Issue is no more than three months.
If a Distributor Redistributes an Issue, the Distributor will use reasonable endeavours to ensure that:
a) the Issue does containing cover offers that have expired; and
b) if the Issue is bagged and no current Issue is included (e.g. a “Value Pack” of two old Issues), this is clearly communicated to consumers on the packaging.
6. New Titles
For each launch of a New Title, a Distributor will ensure that:
a) each Retailer receives notification of the launch prior to the On-sale Date for the Launch Issue; and
b) the number of copies of the Launch Issue distributed to each Retailer is determined reasonably having regard to the total print run of the Launch Issue and the average sales of 1 or more equivalent Titles (provided that a Distributor may distribute at least 2 copies of the Launch Issue to each Retailer).
For Issues of a New Title subsequent to the Launch Issue, a Distributor will, to the extent such data is available, use EDI sales data to determine the appropriate number of copies of those Issues to be distributed to each Retailer until a regular sales pattern for the New Title is established.
7. Maximum shelf life
A Distributor will ensure that the On-sale Period for an Issue does not exceed twelve weeks unless at least two of the following are applied to the Issue:
a) delayed billing, being the process by which …;
b) Retailers are offered an extra sales margin for sales of the Issue on top of the standard sales margin normally paid by that Distributor to Retailers; and
c) Split Deliveries.
8. Split Deliveries
A Distributor may utilise Split Deliveries for an Issue.
If a Distributor utilises Split Deliveries, the Distributor will ensure that:
a) to the extent such data is available, the Distributor uses EDI sales data to determine the appropriate number of copies of the Issue to be delivered to each Retailer for the second or subsequent deliveries; and
b) based on the rate of sales, if a Retailer has sufficient copies of the Issue available for sale to consumers, then a second or subsequent delivery should does not occur.
Here are definitions from the Code which could be useful reading this:
Closed means, in relation to an Issue, ….
Code means this Distributor Code of Conduct.
Distributor means a person engaged in the business of distribution of Titles and who is a signatory to this Code.
Early Returns means the return of a copy of an Issue, in the case of:
Full Copy Returns means:
as the context requires.
Issue means an issue of a Title.
Launch Issue means the first issue of a New Title.
Mastheads means headers, the front cover or the barcode of a copy of an Issue that have been excised from the copy of the Issue.
New Title means any Title that is distributed under a Product Code that has not previously been used.
On-sale Date means, in respect of an Issue, the date, determined by the relevant Distributor, on which the Issue is first made available for sale to consumers by Retailers.
On-sale Period means, in respect of an Issue, the period commencing on On-sale Date and ending on the Recall Date.
Partwork means ….
Product Code means ….
Recall Date means, in respect of an Issue, the date, determined by the relevant Distributor, on which the Issue is required to be withdrawn from sale to consumers by Retailers.
Redistribute means the distribution to Retailers of an Issue that has previously distributed and recalled (using refurbished Full Copy Returns or mint copies of the Issue).
Retailer means a newsagency, supermarket, convenience store or other retailer to which Titles are delivered by a Distributor as a regular distribution channel.
Sales Efficiency means the total number of copies of an Issue sold by Retailers expressed as a percentage of the total number of copies of the Issue distributed to Retailers [averaged over, in the case of:
Split Deliveries means the distribution of an Issue by more than one delivery of copies of the Issue to Retailers during the On-sale Period.
Title means a magazine or similar periodical and, for the avoidance of doubt, excludes books.
We decide who steps foot through the front door of our shops by the pitch in our front window. A windor promoting low margin product will attract low margin shoppers. A window promoting lottery products will attract lottery shoppers. The window promoting higher margin homewares will attract a shower for homewares.
We decide who shops with us and their likely spend based on our front window.
I can’t make that statement often enough to newsagents. Retailers get it as it’s retail 101.
The photo shows the front window from last week at one of my newsagencies. In this display we are pitching good margin funky product to the homewares and gift shopper. It’s part of a cycle of regularly refreshed window displays we are using to attract new shoppers to the business, shoppers who are looking for higher margin gift and homewares lines. It’s working.
This window display is an example of us making conscious choices as to who we want to attract. As I have noted previously, is easier to convert this higher margin shopper to purchase what else we carry than to use traditional newsagency lines to convert to purchasing these items.
The Mandarin has published a good piece by David Donaldson on Australia Post and the call from its CEO for change. I say it’s good as it sticks to the facts and does not engage in the shrill of some of the mainstream media reports over the last week.
Australia Post is dealing with extraordinary disruption and the changes they are seeking could lose votes yet they are essential to the commercial viability of the operation. These challenges are similar to what newsagents face with print media and agency products.
Here’s a letter published in The Land from newsagent Rod King at Bingara, making his case on supermarkets and lotteries. I’m glad Rod wrote the letter and that The Land published it for the argument it makes about excessing supermarket power in Australia. The reach of Coles and Woolworths is, as I understand it, greater than most other supermarket groups in the western world.
While I understand Rod’s argument, it is another example of talking down the channel and that, to me, is a big risk. If Australia really would lose half its rural newsagents in supermarkets got lotteries then the channel is in serious trouble. Surviving on the back of a single product category is no plan for the future in my view.
On the matter of politicians, the party which has consistently spoken out against Coles and Woolworths is The Greens. You can see their position here.
If your newsagency is one that would close if the supermarkets got lotteries, act now, exert your own control over your future, own it.
Good one hi good day so far thanks $4.50 there you go good one.
That’s word for word what I experienced from someone serving in a capital city convenience store last week. There were no pauses, no obvious beginning and end.
The first good one was for me as I picked up my purchase and left. One step to the door I heard the next customer get the same script except for the purchase value. The next customer too.
Fake interest is not good customer service. Rote delivery of catch phrases is not good customer service.
The best retail employees are those who are authentically engaged with customers without spending too long to the disservice of other customers.
By authentically engaged I mean: making eye contact, smiling, saying what they mean to that person at that time and by using sentences and not brief catch phrases like good one – this should have been have a good one meaning have a good day.
I urge newsagents to encourage their employees to be themselves, engage in genuine greetings and not talk from a script. Tell them to ask sensible questions too. In my example, I was asked if I’d had a good day so far at 6:15am. I was in a suit and had clearly not been up all night. But how would the person serving know – they did not look at me.
One of the best ways we can differentiate our businesses is by being ourselves and by not following a tiresome corporate script.
I want people to enjoy my shop even if they don’t make a purchase, I want the visit or even a walk past the front to count for something – a warm feeling, a smile a memory.
I look at the front of the shop as a place for nurturing warm feelings and triggering an emotion. I am certain that if I do this people will notice and from this business will flow. Indeed, this is a factor in our 19% year on year growth – not the only factor, but an important one of many.
So, for sure, product placement is all about pursuing sales. However, I don’t see that road as being direct nor travelled at speed. Let me try and explain that. Take the journals in the photo, they are on display because of the warmth they share. That’s the first step. I know if they work at helping people feel warm or happy then sales will follow. Our placement is thoughtful and peaceful given the nature of the product. They are not cluttered with other product, they are not priced in a gaudy way or to sell on price.
In placing products at the front of the shop I encourage team members to ask – what do we want passers-by to feel? Not, what do we want them to buy? … There is an important distinction.
The more people enjoy what we have on show in our shops the more likely they are to spend and to return. While not always a short or direct road to sales, focussing on feelings is good for business.
